A Worthwhile Exchange
by Trivial Pursuit
Summary: Casey Shraeger doesn't like to talk about her time undercover.


**Warning: Contains non-graphic rape.**

**Notes: Kitty Genovese was a young woman who was stabbed, raped, and eventually murdered in Queens on March 13, 1964. Her death is notable for being one of the most prominent examples of the Bystander Effect (sometimes known as 'Genovese Syndrome'); the attack lasted over half an hour and was witnessed by at least a dozen people but the police were only called after she had already died.**  
**Goldie is the name of one of the pivotal characters in _Frank Miller's Sin City_'s _The Hard Goodbye_. Likewise, the lines 'Worth dying for. Worth killing for. Worth going to hell for. Amen.' are spoken by Marv, Goldie's avenger, at the end of _The Hard Goodbye_.**

The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.

- Henry Thoreau

Casey Shraeger doesn't like to talk about her time undercover. She brushes it off when someone asks, instead telling some tangentially related anecdote about nicknames or shoes. (S_he's twenty-five, sanding on a street corner with other girls, waiting for a man who likes to beat her type into a bloody mess to try to pick her up._) She gives them enough that they don't ask for more, but she still manages to tell them nothing at all. She's sure Walsh knows, if only because he's the guy that can figure all that shit out, or at least is smart enough to put the pieces together once she breaks the arm of a perp who slams her up against a wall with his fingers cutting into her neck. (_There's a voice in her ear from a rooming a building twenty blocks down that's supposed to be comforting but mostly makes her feel more alone; she knows if something bad happens they won't be able to do anything about it._) She probably would have done more except he pulled her off. She can feel is eyes boring holes into her for the rest if the week, but he never says anything and she avoids being alone with him. (_She's been walking the street corner for a week now and hasn't seen him, but she feels in her gut that tonight is the night_.) Eventually things pretend to go back to normal, like someone who'd been beaten up putting on concealer and getting on with their life.

The next time someone needs to go undercover as a hooker she refuses to let Beaumont go, because Beaumont may not be an innocent, but in this case, Casey would rather not corrupt any remaining shreds of naivety she may have. (_A man who matches the suspect's picture to a T smiles at her and grabs her wrist, pulling her into the alleyway._) Beaumont is older then Casey, has seniority, and is visibly affronted when Casey fights tooth and nail for the assignment. But Casey sees the way Beaumont and Walsh look at each other, its not love, not exactly, but its something, and no matter how much it makes her heart ache she can't see that light extinguished in their eyes. Sometimes, when she is tired or feeling pensive she cannot help but notice how young Beaumont is, how untarnished. She hides this under a prickly exterior of wisdom and toughness, but those who are wizened in the way that she wants to be don't act tough, they act mean and they act innocent and they act naive but they never act tough. Tough doesn't get you anywhere except places you don't want to be. Tough gets you lying in the corner of a condemned squat with thirty other people as rats crawl over you, nibbling at any exposed skin. Tough gets you beaten up and left for dead in a dumpster like trash after your 'boyfriend' decides your attitude isn't cute anymore. Tough gets you being held up as an example of What Not To Do. Tough is for people who break. Tough is for the weak and not the strong. Casey is not tough.

So Casey goes back out onto the streets where they call her Stacey and she wears shoes that Casey couldn't walk in but Stacey wears like they were grafted on since birth. (_She mumbles something about rates but she's sure he doesn't hear._) Stacey is a woman of edges, all sharp angles that you could cut yourself on if you're not careful while Casey is soft, not weak, but not jagged in the way Stacey is. (_Suddenly, she's sure, without a shadow of a doubt, that this will go astronomically wrong._) Casey is, at heart, the daughter of a very rich man, Stacey is the girl the very rich man pays to come into hotel rooms with him. (_He pushes her up against the concrete wall, her head cracking against the wall as he pulls her arms above her head._) They get their guy but she feels Walsh's gaze as Stacey walking into the squad room with a serial killer in tow.

The others notice the difference her first day back to work, they notice the twist she puts on a suspect's arm when she brings him in for questioning, notices the sly sensuality used like kevlar that wasn't there when Delahoy and Walsh drop her off at a dingy one room apartment, the causal cruelty which she uses on those around her like a sword swung in crowded room. (_She feels his left hand begin to work at his belt buckle while his right keeps her arms pinned._) When she gets smacked on the bum by a suspect instead of squawking indignantly and smacking him on the back of the head she sneers and tells him she doesn't do conjugal visits or losers. (_It's violent and with each thrust her head slams into the concrete of the wall, smarting painfully and making her more then a little disoriented._) Alvarez gapes and Brown lets something that vaguely resembles worry cross his face. Walsh looks nonplussed, though Walsh would probably look nonplussed if apocalypse ever decided to roll around and put everyone at the Second out of their misery (_She screams, but knows it's futile; this is the part of town where the Kitty Genoveses of the world are born, the part of town where you ignore screaming because you know that you barging in will only make it worse._)

She and Walsh pick up a rape case, a hooker, Goldie, one of the girls that Stacey used to hang with when she worked the streets, was raped in an alleyway and strangled to death afterward. (_She shuts her eyes and prays to all the gods that she doesn't believe in that it will stop soon._) She uses her gloved hand to shut Goldie's eyelids over what little remains of her eyes. It is a familiar alleyway and Casey cannot help but go over to a spot on the wall and press her back up against it, and she cannot help but feel she has let Goldie down by not being there to return the favour. (_The man is ripped back from her and she can hear screaming, his this time, and she sinks bonelessly to the ground, oddly aware of the tug of the sequins on her dress ripping away as they drag on the rough brickwork._) She can see Alvarez simply twitching to ask but mercifully he stays silent. Oddly, for once in his life, Walsh has decided to care what's going on in her miserable excuse for a life. (_It is not one of the bevy of cops who claim to be looking after her who comes to her rescue but a 'fellow' working girl the others call Goldie._

_'You gonna be alright honey?' _)

After their day is over and Walsh coaxes an unwitting Casey back to his diner with promises of food that doesn't violate the health codes and coffee.

'So, who is she?' He stands across from her, leaning forward on his clasped hands as he stares intently into her eyes. (_Goldie is not her mother but she still strokes Casey's back and holds her hair away from her face as puke splatters onto the concrete. She is not Casey's mother but Goldie still holds her in her arms and rocks back and forth, murmuring the loveliest of lies in Casey's ears._)

'Have you ever met somebody who can move mountains when they open their mouth?' Walsh looks at her oddly, his head tilting and his eyes narrowing.

'It's not that what she said was important, just that she said it, you know? As if the very act of her speaking could change the geography of the world.' Walsh nodded, but somehow Casey was sure that he still didn't get it.

'Beaumont's sweet isn't she? Like a breath of fresh air. It's nice to know that all this is worth fighting for.' Casey's tone is conversational but they both know it's far more insidious then that.

'That's not a way most people would describe her.' He smiles wryly.

'That's not the image she likes to project.'

'Indeed.' Walsh isn't tough either. 'I don't think Beaumont would like to hear you describe her as a motivation for working, like she's a child or something.'

'She's an innocent. Innocents are worth fighting for.'

'Beaumont, an innocent?'

'Don't play stupid Walsh, it doesn't suit you.'

'I'll keep that in mind.'

'Do.'

'Best keep this to ourselves.'

'Mmm.'

A month later they catch the guy, or rather, they find out his name and face, and when Casey sees his mugshot she feels like her world is about to come to a circle.

There's a reason Casey Shraeger is one of the best undercovers the NYPD has to offer; that reason is named Goldie and Candy and Nancy and Dani and Valenka and Shardeen and Sonya; these were women who she bled with, whose shoes she shared, whose she pooled resources with to live in a crappy slum apartment, whose johns she maced when they got to aggressive, whose hair she stroked when they went cold turkey. They were more her kin then any of New York's blue bloods and all of the NYPD.

The guy jumps her when they break to door down, wrapping his hands around her neck and shoving her up against the wall.

'Just like old times, ain't it sweetheart?' She shoves him forward with a burst of strength and suddenly they're falling down the narrow concrete stairs and Casey can feel her skull cracking into the hard edge.

Suddenly, they've stopped moving and now Casey is on top, her hands resting on his shoulders, and so she pulls them up and down, his head creating a sickening crack on the floor.

_Crack._

_Crack._

_Crack._

She smacks his head into the concrete again and again until he stops moving and Walsh grabs her under the arms, pulling her back. She can feel his blood splattered across his face and slicking up her boots, keeping her from gaining traction.

The others rush in, guns drawn, and all they see is Casey suspended in Walsh's arms covered in a dead man's blood.

There are things that happen at the 2nd Precinct that don't happen anywhere else. For instance, Casey Schraeger doesn't go to prison for murder, she doesn't even lose her job. She gets suspended for a month but that's it. The other cops in the station still talk though and they don't look at her in the eye anymore. She used to be the predictable one, the level headed one, the Hunnicutt to Walsh's Hawkeye, the Scully to his Mulder, but now she's the wildcard and Walsh is predictable, if only in that he will do the unexpected. Nobody is willing to bet on what Casey Schraeger will do next; if she'll be the good girl, the rich girl, the good cop, the hooker, the victim, the killer, or maybe someone entirely different.

Casey stands by the grave as two men fill it in. Nobody except a few of the other girl and Walsh had shown up.

'Was she worth it?' Walsh sidles up behind her after everyone else leaves.

'What?'

'This complete and utter shitstorm you've brought down upon yourself. Was she worth it?'

'She was. Worth dying for. Worth killing for. Worth going to hell for.' Walsh brushes a piece of hair out of her face before turning and going back to the car.

'I'll be waiting in the car when you're ready.' He'll wait for her. He'll always wait for her.

'Amen.'


End file.
